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thunderjolt · 2 years

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pokémon legends: arceus

where do i start with pokémon legends: arceus? is the question that's wracked my brain for the better part of the last two weeks, as of writing. even as i was on vacation with my girlfriend, seeing the love of my life face to face for the first time, my brain never really left the game - every idle, unoccupied moment filled by my brain ruminating on this game. it makes sense, though - i've talked about pokémon and its design a lot here on thunderjolt, and even more in other places; it's almost a comfort subject, at this point. something i can easily put out analysis of because i already have such a body of my own thought to lean back on. legends is different, though. structurally, it bears little resemblance to the prior pokémon games, with the biggest thing tethering it to the mainline series being its battle system, something that's still heavily modified. it's all familiar, yet so different that i have a hard time even figuring out what angle i want to attack it from. i think i have an idea, though: in a somewhat similar manner to the BDSP post, i'll be going over several "key points" about the game. like in that post, i may not reach every single part worth analyzing, but i'll hopefully hit everything that's most important to me. but first, some...

context

no video game is released in a vacuum. they all have reasons for their creation, and the ideas that lead to them are evident in the other works of their creators. PLA is no exception, and i think establishing where parts of the game came from is helpful when it comes to better understanding it. perhaps most obviously is sword & shield's wild area, game freak's previous tango with the idea of "open pokémon gameplay." a sort of half-measure between a proper open area and the more traditional routes in pokémon tradition, these were contained areas between key towns/routes which showcased free-roaming pokémon in a comparably vast, explorable area with free camera control. i was a vocal critic of the wild areas at SwSh's release, my main criticisms being their lack of relevance to the rest of the game (they didn't enable breaking the set sequence in any way, and exploring them was not particularly rewarding), their locked off nature (powerful, high level pokémon that appeared in them were not allowed to be caught until your pokémon were at a comparable point, leaving little point to engaging with them), frustrating encounter mechanics tied to the real time clock, and the general feeling that they existed to excuse an otherwise very linear game from criticism for that issue. this little experiment seemed to bear fruit, though, as almost all of these issues are addressed somehow in PLA. going back further than SwSh, we have Ultra Sun & Moon, the director of which, Kazumasa Iwao, went on to direct PLA. looking at his two games, you see certain patterns that give us a look into what he values. for one, USUM was noted at the time for its high density of sidequests, far more than had been in any pokémon game to that point. PLA, as an open world game (or at least a game masquerading as one) naturally, has even more, and the clever usage of the world that was seen in them in USUM remains here. USUM was also quite the difficult game, relative to modern pokémon standards - many boss fights that weren't pushovers in SuMo to begin with became quite the challenges, with clever movesets and strategies to boot. i'd go as far as to say that with exp share disabled, it's perhaps the highest difficulty pokémon game out there. perhaps most notable was the final boss of the main story, ultra necrozma, a fight that gave many, even those taking every edge the game gave them, quite the headache. it's a fight that reminds me of a certain one we'll get to later... but speaking of fights, let's talk about

battle stuff

PLA comes sporting a newly revamped battle system, and while not quite a radical departure from previous games, there's certainly a lot to talk about. (i mean, come on; i'm the one who wrote 400 words about just the pokétch in my bdsp post.) let's start with the "background" changes - starting with the things furthest in the background, IV and EV mechanics. while natures remain unchanged, IVs and EVs have seen quite the overhaul. for starters, IVs no longer have an impact on stats - they now only determine smaller factors. this is a fantastic change, and one i hope makes it to the mainline games. IVs have been a thorn in the side of competitive players for a long time, a mostly invisible mechanic that forces players to spend hours breeding just to get a single battle-ready pokémon. while there's some depth in getting specific IVs like HP and speed to manipulate certain things, i don't think it's worth how much of a pain it makes everything. meanwhile, EVs, the much less annoying cousin of IVs, have seen a makeover as well, one i'm more mixed on. PLA replaces EVs with effort levels, a far more forward-facing mechanic signified by a number next to each stat on a pokémon's status screen. with certain items, ELs can be raised one at a time up to a maximum of 10. let's go pikachu and eevee had a system somewhat similar to this, known as AVs, but that was far more powerful, allowing pokémon to add 200 points to every stat. in comparison, ELs only allow pokémon to add 25 to each stat - in practice, this is similar to if you had 100 EVs in each stat in a standard game. this isn't a possible spread normally, as there's an EV limit of 508, but it'd be hard to call it broken, especially as balanced spreads such as that are practically unheard of in competitive singles. while i like the idea of bringing this mechanic out of the dark, i wouldn't like this exact implementation to come to mainline. the EV limit breeds creativity and is much more interesting in my opinion. if they made a modified system with some sort of limit and a higher cap to how many stat points you can add, i'd be all in. then, there's the fact that abilities and held items are gone. i'm sort of conflicted on this change - on one hand, game freak never really used those design spaces very well, if at all - the vast majority of both regular trainers and bosses never had held items, and abilities, while certainly a factor, never seemed like they were thoughtfully put to use. both of these mechanics, on the AI end, were "just there" most of the time, and as there are many held items and abilities with functions directly tied to the traditional turn system, i can understand trimming the fat. on the other hand, why not just adjust the few edge case abilities and cut problem items? it's not like these are really major balance issues. overall, kind of a wash. what else... sleep and freeze have been replaced with new statuses, drowsy and frostbite. drowsy gives a chance of being unable to act like paralysis while also causing the afflicted pokémon to take more damage. frostbite, meanwhile, acts as a special version of burn, dealing passive damage each turn while halving the afflicted pokémon's special attack. both of the statuses these replace have histories of being quite problematic in competitive play, and i think these new ones are both strong and interesting, and i'd love to see them make it into mainline. good change. also, every trainer battle is now equivalent to battle style set from previous games. while i think i ultimately would rather the option be there for players who want it, this is much better than the alternative of battle style shift, especially if you're someone like me who has been playing on set for years now. now onto the big stuff, the core mechanics change - the Action Order.

PLA makes a bold move by taking the linear one-after-the-other battle structure of the rest of the series and replacing it with a new system known as the action order. shown on the right side of the screen, pokémon take turns based on speed as usual, but unlike in previous games, pokémon can also take multiple turns in a row. this is partially facilitated by move styles, another new mechanic whereby the player can use a move in one of two additional styles - agile style, which decreases the power (or duration, for status moves) of the move but shifts the user up in the action order, and strong style, which increases the power and accuracy of the move but brings the user down in the action order. move styles, along with move effects like speed boosts/drops, priority like quick attack (which simply moves you up in the action order in this game) and status like paralysis, lead to a turn order that's constantly shifting and changing, leading to AI encounters that are more interesting, dynamic, and unpredictable than previous games. the potential to take 2 or even 3 turns in a row constantly exists, and that potential exists for your opponent as well, so you're on your toes constantly. it makes battles that would be totally uninteresting in previous games exciting, and for that alone i think it's a massive win, and a change that, all taken, i'm very happy with. i'm not sure if i'd like it to make it into mainline - it's not balanced or designed for multiplayer, and i think it'd honestly be a mess there. but then again, i'm not so against single and multiplayer being different mechanically. ultimately, that's besides the point, though - we're talking about this game. and unfortunately, this change doesn't exist in a vacuum. by biggest problem with the action order is that despite how fun it makes battles, there are very few traditional boss fights in PLA - for a lot of the game, every trainer battle is against someone with only one pokémon, which, while making sense story-wise, isn't really conducive to interesting gameplay. once you're past that point, the game is nearly over. as someone whose love of pokémon partially comes from its one-of-a-kind battle system, this really disappointed me. boss fights are the backbone of any RPG, and the replacement here is, well...

noble fights

i'll say it up front. the noble fights in pokémon legends arceus are by far my biggest problem with the game. let's set the stage: as we'll discuss later, PLA introduces new real-time gameplay mechanics to the series. key to this section are the dodge roll, acting in much the same way as monster hunter, and ball/object throwing, in which you toss poké balls as well as things like bait and balls of mud that can stun pokémon in the overworld. by and large, these work great in the overworld. you may not have to dodge roll that often, but it works well with the attack patterns that aggressive overworld pokémon have, and the throwing, when limited resources, staying out of a pokémon's sight, and general aiming skill are kept in mind, works to the game's benefit. when recontextualized inside of the noble fights, however, these mechanics don't feel quite as good. let's do a quick rundown of these fights, to get you up to speed: at a few points in the game, you'll be met with a powerful, story-relevant pokémon known as a noble pokémon. all of the nobles in the region have become enraged, see, and it's your job to calm them down. how, you may ask? by throwing sacks of food they like at them, of course! this action comes in the form of real-time boss fights where you're provided an infinite supply of the sacks (called balms) and tasked to dodge simple patterns reminiscent of a monster hunter or dark souls encounter. at the top of the screen lies a health bar, which decreases as you hit the enraged pokémon with balms, of which you have an infinite supply. at certain points of the bar, the noble will be stunned, giving you an opportunity to send out a pokémon against it - doing so enters a traditional pokémon battle, whereupon knocking out the noble, you take down a large chunk of its health bar. this isn't necessary, however, and in fact often doesn't amount to much more than just raw sack-throwing during the stun.

i have a lot of problems with these fights, some of which may already be evident in my description alone. for starters, balms don't require aim, and unlike poké balls, there aren't different varieties that travel different distances that you have to account for. you'll always be in lock-on distance of the noble, removing the need for aim, and you will never have to think very hard about your attacks, as their effective range never changes. what's left, then, is a simple affair of dodge rolling attacks at the right time, either on reaction or after learning the patterns. it's... not very interesting. while in something like monster hunter, you'll have an expansive moveset and a variety of weapons that are trying to hit the monster in different places and different ways, fights here are extremely one-dimensional, almost more comparable to a shmup or rail shooter, but without the complex, fast patterns of bullets, high punishment for taking a hit, and scoring systems that make those games exciting. it's simon says. what's worst is that i think game freak knew this (or at least was extremely worried about players not used to action games), as checkpoints during these encounters are extremely generous, leaving you at nearly the exact point of the health bar you were at, provided you chose to continue rather than restarting the fight. and of course, these fights are completely self -contained; they don't reward skills obtained in the rest of the game, they don't confer skills that will be useful for the rest of the game, and the strength and composition of your pokémon party doesn't have to be tested at all. so, we're left with uninteresting fights that don't impact the rest of the game, aren't impacted by the rest of the game, and ultimately seem like they might as well not exist. and to top it off, they come in place of more traditional boss fights that might actually, y'know... feel like they matter. but hey, they needed to justify those new action mechanics. how are those in the rest of the game, anyways?

structure & the overworld

this was originally going to be two separate sections, but now it'll be a single extra long one because i think these two elements are pretty inextricably linked, and i found it hard to talk about one without talking about the other. first, a clarification: for the sake of simplicity, "the overworld" refers to each main area the player travels to, and not jubilife village, the hub area, or dungeon areas, like snowpoint temple. while PLA is not an open world game, it borrows a lot from open world game design, so despite each area technically being split up, it's easier to refer to it all as the overworld. got it? okay, let's go.

as mentioned in the explanation, PLA is structured like so: you begin the game in jubilife village, which serves as the main hub area filled with shops and npcs. upon reaching jubilife's gate, you're shown a world map and given a selection of areas that you've unlocked to choose from. areas are unlocked by progressing through the story and raising your survey rank, a core progression-gating mechanic. how that's raised is something we'll get into at some point during this next paragraph.

so, once you're in the overworld, what do you do?

the overworld in PLA plays out quite similarly to a game like breath of the wild, if on a smaller scale. you traverse, first on foot, then on a selection of pokémon mounts acquired over the course of the game, through plains, forests, mountains, beaches, tundras... you get the picture. while these locales are aesthetically varied, they are largely homogeneous in terms of gameplay; in a game like breath of the wild, you might slide on ice, walk slower in sand, need to take precautions for extreme temperatures - none of that's the case here, and i think that's a shame, as it makes traversal and exploration feel very... simple. there's no stamina system of any kind, so that's not an obstacle to you, different terrains and the elements don't impact your character, and the mounts, well, let's talk about those for a second. the first mount you receive is wyrdeer. it's a pretty simple horse-type thing for ground traversal. unlike many video game horses, it has no fear and will let you move on any uneven or treacherous terrain you wish. it can charge to go faster and it can also jump, which is useful, as you can't do that yourself. the charge and jump allow you to get to a lot of places you're probably not supposed to with enough elbow grease, which is a lot of fun. next, you get ursaluna. this is another ground mount, but strictly for finding hidden items instead of traversal. i almost never used it. then, basculegion - this allows you to cross water, with a similar overall moveset to wyrdeer, just aquatic. this is also the only mount you can throw poké balls on, as you kinda need to be able to if they expect you to catch things in the water. then, sneasler, which allows you to scale mountains. sneasler is extremely unfussy in terms of climbing, never getting tired and never losing its grip. finally, braviary, which combines the functions of botw's glider and it's infamously broken revali's gale ability. these mounts all come together for some traversal that's actually pretty satisfying, especially thanks to the smart move of using both context-based prompts and automatic switches to let you smoothly go from climbing to flying to running to swimming. that's kinda the thing though; it's a little too smooth. with your only fears in the wild being fall damage and wild pokémon, by the time you get braviary, nothing is a threat anymore. you can just call braviary to safely fly away from any aggressive pokémon you might encounter, and you can use it to completely negate falling damage, too. the complete lack of friction makes traversal pretty boring at a certain point, never asking you to make decisions or think very much while exploring the world. but ultimately, traversal is a means to an end - what kind of things can you expect to find while exploring?

well, pokémon, obviously. in PLA, as i've been alluding to this whole time, pokémon are found roaming the overworld. they come in many varieties, some hostile, some friendly. some that get mad only if provoked, some that get mad just by seeing your ugly mug, and some that don't give a shit what you do. the highlight here is the real-time poké ball throwing. assisted by a targeting system and gyro aim (that isn't on by default for some reason), it's a lot of fun! things usually play out with you sneaking up behind a pokémon (something which confers a catch rate bonus if you go undetected), attempting to throw a ball at it, and if it works, great! you have yourself a new pokémon. if it doesn't, and the pokémon notices you, it will usually become angry, preventing any further reckless ball-throwing and often attacking. this forces you to then either use an item, like a rotten apricorn or ball of mud, to stun & pacify it, or send out a pokémon of your own to enter the traditional wild pokémon battle setup. there's more than just that, like different varieties of balls with different physics that require different skills to use effectively, but that's the gist. overall, i think everything about the catching in this game works really nicely. targeting exists, but tapers off at longer ranges, meaning that a good aim is still key to catching a lot of things, and general environmental awareness is also rewarded. i always find it hard to talk about things like this in writing, and end up just saying "it works" over and over, but it really does! it's the glue holding this game together. still, i do have some problems with it. for one, the bait system really doesn't work for me. i get what they were going for - different pokémon like different food, so they reward experimentation and add a lil depth by making you try out different baits on different pokémon. ultimately though, thanks to menuing that's just a little too slow and clunky, and the overall feeling that it wasn't worth wasting my resources, i never really interfaced with this mechanic. it was easier to just throw balls from a distance or enter battle than to try to figure out what bait every pokémon likes. i also found that later in the game, far too many pokémon aggro very easily, and the amount of docile monsters becomes very small, making doing just about anything without entering battle a real pain, and almost making the new catching mechanics feel pointless at times. still, with patience and care, it can be overcome, and overall i think the catching in PLA is an absolute win for the game.

then, there's materials - PLA is the first game in the series to feature a crafting system, and it's a fairly simple one, with resource gathering and crafting playing out quite similarly to monster hunter. trees, rocks, and other various and sundry things litter the overworld - sending out a pokémon in front of one will gather its resources for you, and also grant that pokémon a small amount of experience. it's important to gather resources, as money is very tight in the main campaign of PLA, and things like apricorns and berries are highly important for crafting poké balls and healing items. along the way, you'll start finding new and different resources, as well as regularly unlocking recipes for new items. be mindful of what you're picking up, however, as inventory space is tight, and despite materials stacking , you'll still often have to make choices on what you bring back to base and what you throw out in the field. ultimately, while i like the dynamic that's created by limited money and craftable items, i found that the inventory management required made me afraid to experiment - why use resources crafting new interesting items when they're taking up more inventory space that i'll need for materials? i'll need however many inventory slots to bring my staple resources like poké balls, revives, and potions with me, so taking a more niche use case item with me feels like a waste if it's gonna prevent me from getting the things i need to make more of the stuff i care about. i think forcing players to make decisions on what to take and what to leave is interesting, but this game does a poor job of it and ends up feeling stifling. i probably would've added a separate bag category for materials to mostly shore up this issue.

...and, that's about it. there's little else to find in the overworld outside of new landmarks, but that sort of undersells the joy of constantly finding new pokémon. despite gripes, i think PLA's overworld works plenty well. but how does it tie into everything else?

PLA is structured unlike any previous pokémon game, with pokédex completion being more intertwined with and crucial to progression than ever before. here's the basic gist - there are two core means of progressing in PLA; nobles and star ranks. these two together split the duties of previous games' badges as progression markers. nobles, as previously established, are pretty simple. at certain points in the game, you fight a noble, calm it, and progress the story. star ranks are a little more complex. as you explore the world and capture pokémon, you'll notice specific objectives listed on each pokémon's dex entry. these are research tasks. they vary, being anything from catching a pokémon X number of times, seeing it perform a move, catching from behind, or knocking it out with an attack it's weak to. as you complete research tasks, you're given research points, which feed into your star rank, which starts at 0 but reaches as high as 10. each rank up to 5 (the minimum to complete the main story) will allow higher level pokémon to obey you, give you access to new crafting recipes, and most importantly, give you access to new key areas that are required to progress the story. this progression system... gets its job done. it's not especially bad - though it's certainly possible to have forced to grind for rank, you'll usually hit the barrier for each star rank as you progress through the main story just through normal play - but it also it locks the player down, still forcing a rigid order of progression. despite being the most open pokémon game to date, it doesn't feel very free. you can't even decide to put off most story events, as access to new areas is determined by both star rank and beating nobles. a very clear line is drawn - if you want to do more stuff, play their way, or don't play at all. and the story that this rigid structure is in service of is, well... let's talk about it.

under the cut, there will be spoilers for the main story and postgame content of pokémon legends: arceus. read at your own discretion.

story

PLA's story begins with sort of a meta-twist: contrary to the impression we got from the game's marketing, your character is from modern times, and is isekai'd into the past and the hisui region by arceus. this also gives an explanation for the arc phone, a device you have that serves as your tool for map and objective marking over the course of game. upon coming to, you're found on a beach by professor laventon, a pokémon researcher, who immediately puts you to work catching some pokémon he's accidentally gotten loose. it turns out you're better at catching pokémon than anyone else, and because you don't have anywhere else to go, he brings you on to work with the galaxy team, a group of settlers in hisui. i'd like to take a moment to mention that this setup is... slightly troubling. i am a very dumb, very white person. i don't have great knowledge of history or geopolitics or anything like that. just video games. but even i can see the issue with making the heroes of your game settler colonists, especially considering clear connections drawn between the native people of hisui and the ainu people of hokkaido, the region sinnoh (and therefore hisui) was based on, people whose land was colonized by japan. i won't spend too much time talking about it - i'm not especially well-informed, and this isn't really my wheelhouse - but it feels distasteful at best to use this as the backdrop and excuse for why much of the region is mostly empty, and i would be remiss not to mention it.

anyways, through the galaxy team, you're sent on a variety of missions, the main one being quelling the nobles - powerful, large pokémon revered as deities of a sort by the native people of hisui, the diamond and pearl clans, two clans debating the identity of a deity they call sinnoh, believed to rule over time by the diamond clan and space by the pearl clan, something that's lead to years of conflict for them. the nobles have all been mysteriously enraged, see, and no one knows why, only that it began when you showed up. naturally, this creates tension between the diamond and pearl clans as well as the galaxy team, all of whom are slightly suspicious of each other (and you) but willing to work together. over the course of the game, you meet numerous characters, most of which are very clearly intended as ancestors of characters that exist in modern pokémon. there are a lot of cute references and lore nods here, and as a pokémon nerd, many of them made me happy or just had me thinking hard about what their implications are. these characters themselves are hardly very distinct though, and i'd struggle to describe most of their personalities. pokémon games have never been known for deep character development, but it felt especially extreme here - no one you meet, even the characters you spend the entire game repeatedly visiting, is particularly interesting or well-defined. no real character arcs unfold. the standout character ends up being ingo, a minor character from pokémon black and white, who had fallen into hisui in a similar manner to you years prior and was taken in with no memory by the pearl clan (though he's subtly implied to be a faller, a concept established in the postgame of sun and moon.) the standout story moment of the game doesn't come from any of the major characters, but from a brief sequence spent with ingo, where he guides you through a dark cave and talks about the vague fragments of memories of the future world he once lived in, of the people and pokémon he knew. it's a poignant moment that's also a treat for longtime fans, and the game never reaches its heights again. that ingo has ended up as the breakout character of this game, with more fan works by far dedicated to him than any other character, at least in the circles that i run in, is unsurprising, and makes me feel vindicated. he's legitimately compelling.

anyways, upon defeating the final noble, the crack in the timespace you fell from gets bigger and you're brought in by commander kamado, who now believes you're the culprit behind everything, frenzied nobles and all. you're exiled from jubilife village until you can prove your innocence. other characters try to protest but despite their efforts you're forced to leave. you visit many the characters you've met throughout the game, who are sympathetic but can do nothing, as any action from any side could turn the existing tension into an all-out conflict. enter volo, a character i've neglected to mention. clearly made out to be the ancestor of cynthia, sinnoh's future champion, volo is a humble merchant obsessed with myths and legends. as a neutral party of sorts, he agrees to help you when no one else can, and takes you to cogita, another character with whom his relationship is unclear, but who is also implied to be an ancestor of cynthia. she drops some exposition on you, revealing that the three lake guardians of hisui may be able to help you craft a red chain, an object that can help close the rift. you travel to each lake, your choice of either the diamond or pearl clan leader coming with you, do some trials, and head to the peak of mount coronet, where the rift is, but it's too late. kamado's already there, ready to attack a pokémon sighted coming through the rift. you do a series of boss fights, beat kamado, battle the pokémon (dialga or palkia, corresponding to which clan leader you picked earlier) and everything is resolved. even the diamond and pearl clans have stopped fighting, now that it's known that they were both worshipping two separate deities all along! except, you never did find out what caused that rift.

that's the synopsis, anyways. this story is... lacking. while the giant rift in the sky and dramatic music playing throughout the last act creates a foreboding atmosphere that's fairly cool, there's nothing to really chew on. i tried to pick out any strong themes or anything, but there's really nothing that i could find, anyways. it's just a story to a video game and a delivery mechanism for weird lore shit that people like me eat up. it's okay at that, but i think a lighter story in a form similar to a game like breath of the wild could've been even more effective at dispensing that cool lore without subjecting me to a bland, basic story full of uninteresting characters that feels like it's keeping the game from its full potential. i know criticizing a pokémon story for being basic is silly, but the series has, at worst, had stories that don't get in the way, and at best, shown a capacity for excellent storytelling in both black & white and sun & moon. i don't think this game is either, and that's really disappointing. anyways, now that we're done with the game, what's left to do?

postgame

the postgame of PLA begins when volo asks you to collect all the plates you haven't collected yet. i haven't mentioned plates til now - they're key items, stone plates corresponding to each type with text inscribed on them describing a creator and the beginning of the universe and whatnot. over the course of the game, you've received several through various means (primarily by helping the nobles) but now you've gotta finish the collection. this is done primarily catching a bunch of sinnoh's legendary pokémon - the aforementioned lake guardians, heatran, cresselia, regigigas. after obtaining what you're told is all of the plates, you travel with volo to spear pillar, and the truth is revealed - he was the one who created the time-space rift by seeking out the giratina, dialga and palkia's counterpart, banished to another world for violence, and set this game's plot into motion. he's read of arceus in legends and wants so desperately to meet it and make a new, better world that he's done everything he can, including manipulating you, to get him closer to his goal. he casts off his normal clothes and reveals his "true appearance," so to speak. hair styled like arceus and a white and gold shirt clearly styled after it. this twist is neat, but what follows after is the main reason i'm here talking about this at all. cue boss battle.

a sinister arrangement of cynthia's theme begins playing, as you're challenged by "pokémon wielder volo." in hisui, the term trainer doesn't yet exist, and even if it did, it wouldn't be accurate for volo. pokémon are tools for what he believes to be his divine purpose. what follows is what i believe to be the most difficult boss battle in any official pokémon game. volo's team is complete, with 6 pokémon. they're all strong, well type-balanced, have strong movesets, and he isn't afraid to switch occasionally. his pokémon will be usually be well above yours in level when you first face off against him - pretty much everyone i know needed to grind at least a little to make it competitive. all the while, the new battle system really feels like it's actually being put to the test. this battle is fun, challenging, engaging, and exciting. even brilliant diamond and shining pearl's cynthia falls short of it, if only because of how much closer your levels are. and while that fight was a showcase of just how much potential you can squeeze out of pokémon's existing mechanics, this one shows the full potential of these new mechanics, the potential boons of ditching design space like items and abilities that go largely underutilized by the single player stories. and then, once you beat him by the skin of your teeth - you see your pokémon gain their experience. volo seems in denial of what just happened, talks about how your meddling ruined everything for him. you feel confident that it's over. pokémon convention almost always has the big bad villains doing this when they lose. and then pokémon legends: arceus makes its final move away from convention - a dramatic close-up of volo's face. "can you feel it? the chill creeping through your veins - the eldritch presence icing your heart?"

Bishaan!

a dramatic cutscene plays, a smug expression on volo's face. a dark portal opens behind him, and out comes giratina, your final challenge. volo issues a command - "giratina, strike [them] down!" giratina is strong defensively, and comes with shadow force, a powerful move that, in this game, increases its evasion as well. your pokémon are still battered from the fight with volo, and there's no way to heal them in between. a loss will require retrying the entire fight. you have to do it in one go or not at all. at this point, you'll probably need to strategically manage which pokémon you keep alive during the fight with volo so that you have good matchups going into giratina and don't have your remaining few wiped. eventually, once you break through giratina - a calm, giratina dissolving into darkness - followed by the music swelling up once more, giratina now in its more offensively powerful origin forme. your true final surprise. it gets a free hit in, in all likelihood knocking out whatever you have left, and it's back to planning throughout the whole fight, now taking the presence of 2 giratinas into account. eventually, you prevail. volo concedes, revealing one more thing he lied to you about - you don't have all the plates. he hands you the final plate, the ghost type spooky plate, and heads off. your celestica flute - the item you've been using to call your mounts this whole time - transforms into the azure flute in response to the plates. you are prompted to play the azure flute. it's time for arceus. and then, in all likelihood, you are given one message.

Seek out all Pokémon.

one last task before meeting the big guy. catch every pokémon in the hisui dex, as simple as that. or is it so simple? i've never been much of a dex completer. i'm a battler at heart. i never felt the reward was worth it, nor was the journey itself fun enough. but in this game... the promise of one last boss battle, with none other than arceus itself, the thing that us pokémon fans have been waiting to do battle with in some form for over 10 years, ever since the unreleased arceus event in diamond and pearl. and the catching here is fun! and i can obtain every single pokémon without trading! so i embarked on my journey to truly cap this game off. i'll spare you the specific details, but i found the process enjoyable! it was the first time i felt like doing dex stuff was a genuinely enjoyable time and not work, or some obligation. after a few days of doing it in my spare time, i'd completed the dex. now it was time to head to mt. coronet's peak and end this thing. i played the azure flute, travelled to the hall of origin, and...

the arceus fight was disappointing. realistically, i knew in my head that it'd be in the action style of the noble fights, but i just thought somewhere deep in my mind that it'd be different somehow. it's certainly the most difficult, but there's not much else there. the excitement i felt finally hearing arceus' theme in a real in-game boss fight without any action replay, though? it was unique, and special. and maybe that feeling, that closure to something i'd been wanting for so long, really was worth it.

closing thoughts

as of now, this is by far the longest thunderjolt post ever. i've been working on it for months, and while i certainly could've finished it quicker, i'm glad that i didn't shit something out that i wasn't happy with. pokémon legends arceus is a very interesting game. i liked it, even. it's somewhere in the middle of the pack for me as far as pokémon games go, but i respect it far more than its ranking may suggest, just for its willingness to take risks, make changes, and do interesting things. it's certainly my favorite generation 8 title by far. many people have called this game a blueprint for pokémon's future - all eyes are on scarlet & violet to see if they take the right lessons.

there are numerous things i wish i could've talked about in this post. it's hard to fit everything in, and it's hard to even remember what ground i've already covered when i've been working on this for so long. but the point i want to make clearest is that this game is cool. it has a million problems. it's structurally weak, the story is poor, the graphics, which i never even touched on, are awful, and the vast majority of the boss fights on offer are uninteresting and don't really test skills the player has been learning the rest of the game. and yet, i like it. because its peaks are very high, because it indulges that autistic pokémon nerd in me who has been obsessed with this series for as long as she can remember and thinks about it constantly. for every few mind-numbingly bland story cutscene, there's a shining light. a minor character from a decade-old game working struggling with amnesia, tying into a plot point from the postgame storyline of a 6 year old game but not its upgraded counterpart that many are now more likely to play. a truly challenging boss battle that makes use of all the battle mechanics and tests your endurance and strategic planning. just, freely catching pokémon in real time in the first place. those are the things that make this game special, things i didn't know the franchise could deliver me anymore.

who's to say if i'll ever write a post this long again, but i hope you enjoyed your time reading it. i want to extend thanks to every person who follows this humble little blog. it's those few likes, excited replies, people telling me they really enjoyed a post that keep me going, working on this weird little diary that sometimes puts out nearly novella-length game analysis.

i'll close things off with the team i spent my playthrough with, as is sort of a tradition for pokémon posts here. see you all later!

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slade-neko · 3 years

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Monster Hunter Rise ~ My Thoughts

Oh, man, Monster Hunter Rise, where to begin?! I guess I’ll start with the game itself in a nutshell is a BLAST! It’s not without a few issues I have with it personally, but I’ve been having a lot of fun playing it nonetheless. I want to take the time to mention I am a second generation hunter myself. Started playing Monster Hunter in 2008 with Freedom 2 on PSP at the tender age of 13. So its safe to say I’ve got a lot to say about this game! If you want to read the full thing then here it is.

This review is MOSTLY spoiler-free! There isn’t a lot you can spoil in this game... I mention some endgame stuff and there is a screenshot that contains the final boss’s armor but not focused on it. Just a friendly warning if you are a die-hard spoiler avoider.

The Weapon Types

I’ll start with the fact that the weapon types in MH Rise are all really fun to play and have very well polished movesets. I haven’t extensively played with all the weapon types, but I’d like to say a few things about the ones I have been using. Long Sword feels the best it has ever been in the entire series in my opinion, ironically this game starts you off with a Long Sword equipped too.

I went ham with Long Sword throughout the main story, but now have swapped over to maining Light Bowgun. I was a big Heavy Bowgun main in MH World, but shield spreadshot builds don't feel the same for me as they did in World, but the Light Bowgun in this game shreds. Narga Piercing LBG for distance shooting and then Magnamalo Spread LBG for getting up close and personal. Evade Extender 3 makes zipping around the battlefield a breeze and next to impossible to get hit making it a very fun and rewarding playstyle.

My brother on the other hand has been hitting hard with Long Sword and the new Hunting Horn. He misses the original note playing at times, but the damage on HH is insane and healing constantly with the Rampage Horn is a big plus too for a game with no health regen factors. He’s been building sets for nearly every weapon type, but LS and HH are his two mains. Both weapon types were introduced in 2nd Gen, where we started, so maining those two for him is a bit symbolic. Also the fact that LS has been heralded as the most used weapon-type and HH the least used as of recent games is a neat contrast to use both.

The Characters, Setting, and Story

I know Monster Hunter isn’t exactly known for it’s characters or story, heck most games hardly had a story until World came out. Typically Monster Hunter games follow the simple formula of big bad flagship monster causing problems with local village and ecosystem, hunt it, happy ending?, turns out bigger badder scarier secret boss monster was actually causing the problems, hunt it, true happy ending. Nothing wrong with that, I can roll with whatever story they make, majority of players are here for the gameplay. That said, I still enjoy and appreciate what story the devs put together no matter how it turns out. I liked what Rise offered, nothing too grand like World, more of a simple story following the old games formula.

Surprisingly I haven’t seen many people talk about the characters in this game and the little fact that this is the first time in the ENTIRE SERIES (outside of MH Stories) characters have REAL names! Hinoa, Minoto, Fugen, Yomogi, Iori, Hamon, Rondine, Hojo, Utsushi, like honest to goodness actual NAMES, not “Blacksmith,” “Village Elder,” or “Fish Mongress.” The characters are fun though, nice and memorable, not really annoying. Also following World’s fully voice-acted characters is a nice touch. I sometimes miss the days of old when characters had simple grunts and you read everything, but I doubt that will ever come back now, just something lost to the classic MH games.

Then there’s the super Asian-inspired ninja-like theme to the entire game. You’ll either love it, hate it, or maybe you don’t care about how the village is at all. I like the whole ninja aesthetic while it does work for this game in particular, but I will admit its a little bit weird in the entirety of Monster Hunter as a series.

The Hunts, Gameplay, and Everything Else

Ah yes, the gameplay, the heart of the Monster Hunter games... while yes I do think this game is a lot of fun overall, I do have a few complaints with it... I’m going to break this down into mini-sections because there is a lot to cover here.

Quest Preparations Maybe I’m just old school, but I feel like they took away a lot of the prep work for going on hunts. No cold/ hot drinks, access full inventory on quests, refill items, no longer eat for attack/ def buffs, monsters always visible on maps, no random spawning on High Rank quests, little things like that. In the old games you had to prepare for each hunt, it was part of the game. You go after a big monster, you make sure you got everything you need to win BEFORE you depart on the quest. It feels like they are double-downing more so on just the fighting itself.

Tracking Monsters Monsters aren’t even tracked anymore, they’re always visible on your map. No having to run around and look for them like classic MH games... Though to be fair maybe that’s better off in the old games with the paintball tracking system and individual loaded areas than in a game with a fully open-world setting because I got headaches tracking monsters in MH World’s open-world especially the Ancient Forest.

The Monsters The new monsters in this game a welcome addition. I don’t really have any problems with their designs or fights. Have to say Goss Horag has a very fun fight, but my favorite new monster is probably Rakna-Kadaki. A pelican spider is a dang neat idea for a monster and there aren’t a lot of Temnocerans. Would love to see the return of the Carapaceons though! This is literally the perfect game for Shen-Gaoren to come back with the new rampage system! Bring back my giant enemy crab, Capcom please!

Monster Behavior/ Minion Monsters/ Herbivores Added this subsection to talk specifically about the monsters’ behaviors in this game along with the minion monsters cause while not very important overall there are still some things to be said.

Same thing in MH World, but the monsters act more like animals now. While yes, that is more realistic and is mostly a good thing, but it honestly gives me second thoughts about hunting them. In World most boss monsters wouldn’t attack you unless you attacked them first. That made me feel terrible walking up to a calm Teostra just chilling in the dunes and then I start smacking the heck outta it with a weapon... Old games the monsters saw you, the “something’s gonna getcha music starts playing” and then it charges you and your in the fight! Now its like you’re the monster killing a bunch of animals (exaggerating a bit, but still!)

What’s not exaggerated is the minions in this game. The old games had minions that were incredibly annoying and I wanted to kill them. This game however has the sweet little bullfangos, jagras, and other minions just lazing around sleeping. My brother and I were in need of Rhenoplos scalps for some gear, set out on a quest to slay some, find them peacefully sleeping by some rocks and I ask my brother, “Okay, so you gonna bash its skull in with your hammer and pop its eyes out or am I gonna fill it full of lead with my bowgun?” Needlessly violent example, I know, but it still makes the point that it feels more like animal cruelty when they aren’t bothering anyone. I’d rather the minions just start charging me and piss me off as a player, so I wouldn’t feel bad defending myself to take them out.

Lastly, there’s the herbivores. Not a lot to say on the matter, but I feel like they could’ve given a few more herbivore types. Like no Aptonoth in this game? I thought they were kinda a staple of the series for herbivores. I also feel like the maps could feel a bit more lively with more herbivores placed around. Maybe Mosswines in the Shrine Ruins, especially when scaling the central mountain shrine with the mushroom colonies everywhere. Great spots for mushroom piggies!

The Maps/ Locales I love them! Well for the most part. They are good and I don’t dislike any in particular. My only problems is that they sometimes feel too big, too open, and too empty. I know they have a lot of stuff in them, gathering points, spiribirds, relics, and many other things, but there is an odd sense of emptiness there. Like I mentioned earlier, I think perhaps adding in more scattered monsters might’ve helped that a bit. Only other thing to mention is that the new locales rely too heavily on the Palamutes to get around effectively. I personally like bringing my kitties with me on multiplayer quests, so I am at the mercy of wirebug zipping to get around and often left behind.

Oh, last thing I will mention on maps is while its not in the base game, I pray they add back the Tower as a map. Preferably the 2nd Gen version where you start at base camp and scale the tower. A game that’s all about rising and verticality, the Tower is literally the PERFECT map to have in this game!

Spiribirds Love em or hate them, there’s the Spiribirds. Cool concept, but I don’t think it works very well in my opinion. I don’t care about roaming the map to collect my bird buffs, I just want to eat for Attack Up large like old games and be done. I definitely try to grab them when I can, but I can’t be bothered to chase down all the birds each and every hunt just to get my full Attack up buff.

Wirebugs On with the title of the game being Rise giving meaning to the new wirebugs feature. Wirebugs are fun to use, zip around the map, super attacks, and what-not, but I can’t help but feel its a little out of place in a Monster Hunter game. Feels like I’m Spider-Man or something. I know I praised this when I played the demo and I’m not dissing it now, I still enjoy using them, but I am also admitting that they do feel very outlandish for a Monster Hunter game. Still better than the slinger/ clutch claw though! Let’s never talk about those accursed items again.

Silkbinds The Silkbind attacks though are fully great! I love having access to super attacks like Hunting Arts and things like that for my weapons, so I sincerely hope they keep some kind of super attack format in future games.

Mounting The mounting system in this game is weird, but pretty cool! Its a great way to let you control a monster for a change and beat the snot out of other monsters as a monster. I saw someone describe it is as “going full on Ratatouille with the monsters” and honestly there isn’t a better way to explain it than that.

Palicoes/ Palamutes The Buddy System in this game is great! Palicoes still feel about the same as they did in World, maybe a little less powerful now since you can have two of them at once, still love them though and prefer to bring a Palico with me on my quests.

Then there is the new doggies, the Palamutes! Super cute and cuddly, but also quite powerful! I love the doggos, but I wish the maps weren’t designed around them. I like to bring my cat with me on multiplayer quests, so I don’t get a dog to ride and the maps are HUGE, very wide-opened, lots of running... Wirebugs help, but still not quite as fast as the puppies.

Oh and two little pet peeve of mine is you can’t see other players buddy names and you can’t change buddy comments! I want people to be able to see my buddies’ names and I need my Garfield cat’s comment to say “I hate Mondays.” and my Sonic dog to say “Gotta go fast!” and my Courage the Cowardly Dog dog to have “The things I do for love.” Unless there is a hidden menu somewhere where you can edit these, but alas I have yet to find it...

Voiced Hunters Hunters have always been the silent protagonists of the games with attack grunts, hurt sounds, and little to nothing more. Now they are full voiced for gestures and full hunting dialogue. I really like this, its funny to hear them shout things and stuff and having some familiar voice actors in the game is really cool to have them voice my characters. My brother rocking the Xander Mobus voice-type on his hunter is freakin’ cool and hilarious at the same time. I am tempted to make a Zentisu hunter, name him Zenitsu, give him the Zentisu voice-type, and go full Thunderclap maining a Thunder-type Long Sword just for the heck of it. Oh and also there’s the fact that CRISTINA VEE IS OFFICIALLY IN A MONSTER HUNTER GAME NOW AS A FEMALE VOICE OPTION! Still feels weird comparing it to previous games, but I’m okay with it because the fun factor in it outweighs the weird for me personally. Besides if you for some reason decided you hate fun you can just mute them in the options.

Layered Armor (or lack-of) I love Layered Armor... and there is only two sets in this game. The Deluxe Edition’s “Kamurai” samurai looking layered armor and the Magnamalo amiibo “Sinister” layered set with a few head only layered pieces as DLC in the eShop. I was honestly expecting all armor to be layered and unlockable in the base game after the huge demand for layered armor in MH World and Transmog being a thing in the side team’s last game, MHXX/ MHGU.

I think a mixed system of both Transmog and Layered Armor would be ideal. Transmog system for in-game armors and then additional bonus themed armor sets made as Layered Armors like the Kamurai set. That way players can be rewarded for crafting all the armors with use of a Transmog system even giving an incentive to make multiple sets twice to Transmog differently. While the devs could still make money off cool unique Layered sets as DLC in the eShop. Literally fixes both issues right there. Feel free to use that idea, Capcom, and you’re welcome.

Multiplayer/ Lobbies/ Scaling Four people lobbies are back! Not necessarily a good thing. I mean hey its not bad either, but I honestly preferred the larger lobbies like World had. Having more people doesn’t make it less social. All they need is to force people to do multiplayer quests in the Gathering Hub. I prefer large lobbies and have people do whatever they want and meet up in the Hub for socials. Mainly what I dislike about 4 player lobbies is everyone will be expected to help each other on their quests within the lobby. I just want to chill and do my own thing, but see and interact with other players in the village between quests. Oh, but the ability to join quests late is seriously great! Dropping into a lobby and seeing people already on a quest and being able to jump in with them is a godsend!

Difficulty scaling is a very weird thing. It’s basically a double-edged sword. Its good to have because you can beat everything on your own, but that also defeats the purpose of multiplayer. In the past games, Hub quests were scaled higher for multiplayer, so getting more people to help only made it easier. Now, why bother with players when you could just do it yourself scaled to an easier single-player difficulty? I can usually get faster times when I solo things now. Multiplayer is there just for the social aspect to goof around with friends or if you just wanna do chill hunting with people. It’s no longer a requirement or an aid for beating the game. Like I said, its a weird thing, not bad, but not good either? I dunno, I just compare a lot of things to the classic MH games. In the past getting a second player to help makes it twice as easy compared to beating a Hub quest by yourself, while getting four players makes it where you’re effectively doing 4x more damage. Now its like you get 4-players and the monster gets 4x the health too. That might not be the exact scaling, but you get my point.

One last thing I want to touch on which a lot of people have already mentioned is the fact multiplayer can get pretty chaotic. Especially when you have 4 players with 4 palamutes all smacking away at a monster. Hit effects are EVERYWHERE! Creates quite the mess and can be hard to tell what’s happening.

Quest Difficulty/ Harder Monsters I don’t care too much about how hard the game is and I know this is a touchy subject, but I do like challenging monsters, without relying on gimmicky crap to fight them. MH World was filled with gimmicky fights like Behemoth, Leshen, even Alatreon and Fatalis to some degree. I still have Extreme Behemoth PTSD. I just want good clean fights, no damage checks, unavoidable one-hit kill moves, crap like that is not cool. I want to cart because I screwed up and made a wrong move and got punished by some wicked strong attack from a big bad boss monster. Not a stupid damage check telling me, “Oh, you not do enough damage, you die now.” To be fair, old Monster Hunter games had some gimmicky fights too though. MH4U with Apex Monsters and Wystones, MHGU with HP tank Hyper Monsters, heck even Freedom 2 was unintentionally gimmicky with outrageous hitboxes haha. Oh, that game was brutal! Deviants in MHGU were amazing though! Some really tough fights there, but incredibly rewarding to beat, that’s what I love!

The Endgame/ Secret Bosses (or lack-of) There is no Endgame, we are stuck in the Infinity War for now (or Affinity War as my brother calls it since the meta is all about those crits!) Okay, so that’s a bit harsh, all jokes aside there is an endgame, but its not exactly what I was expecting and leaves me wanting more. One of my favorite aspects of Monster Hunter games is the endgames and the secrets they hold, which this game had very few! They revealed nearly EVERY monster before this game launched. I get it, they want to sell their game, but leave some secrets please. Only monster that was secret was just the final boss. I love getting to the end of the game and unlocking new quests to fight the big scary endgame bosses. I guess World kinda suffered from that too a little bit. Mostly hanging on to old games like Freedom Unite unlocking Fatalis, MH3U getting Abyssal Lagiacrus, and Molten Tigrex in MH4U was very cool! Could just be the state of games these days like Smash Ultimate where they reveal everything before the game is out since data miners will just leak them anyways... kinda makes me sad.

Updates and Future Content

I know this game has planned updates that will add a lot of content, but I can’t help but feel those “updates” were part of the game that’s been withheld to make the updates feel like so much more. Its like they ripped out the ending of the game and are passing it of as a big huge update to be released after launch.

The real kick to this is the fact there is no Hunter Rank in the current game... I’ve done approximately 300 quests so far in my game, its going to hurt me very badly when I see the HR update come out and I don’t get any HR for the hunts I’ve done so far. I know some people could care less about HR and just see it as a number, but for me that number is a nice thing to see. I love seeing it go up as I do more quests and play more of the game. Going hard at launch has been a lot of fun, but less rewarding knowing I am quite possibly not getting any HR points for all my gameplay.

Only reason I can see they would not want to allow a buildup of HR before this update is because this update will add a bunch of new endgame monsters most likely unlocked through getting high Hunter Rank. I pray for my boy Akantor to finally shine again, I know the side team loves him, so let’s please get him into Rise! AND Please don’t show them off in videos, Capcom! Just stealth drop a bunch of Elder Dragons and Endgame bosses into the game!

Final Thoughts

I’m probably just stuck in the old days some, I guess this is just how the games will be going forward, but a bit of that makes me sad. Feels like the game series I loved so much is losing some character and personality of what made is special and unique. This review might’ve got a bit ranty, but I like to critique a game series I am very passionate about. World was very similar to this. From everything I’ve said, by no means do I hate this game. I still love MH Rise and the entire series and I’ll keep playing it having a lot of fun along the way. Best way I can describe Monster Hunter Rise is it’s the Side Team’s Monster Hunter World. Its fresh, new, and very experimental!

All in all this game is still great and I stand by what I said at the beginning of this entire post, its a blast to play! I hope everyone can enjoy it and remember, Happy Hunting!

#Monster Hunter Rise #Monster Hunter #MHRise

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dreamingdolls · 5 years

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FFXIV, and why it’s unlikely I’ll ever return to WoW

So, inspired by my friend @luniil (who isn’t very active here but does occasionally write down some thoughts on gaming topics), I wanted to try my hand at writing a post about why I’ve grown to love FFXIV as much as I do, and reflect a little on how things were in WoW in comparison.

To preface this; I am not a Final Fantasy player. Nor Warcraft for that matter -- I had not touched that franchise until The Burning Crusade was in the middle of it’s lifespan. I play MMOs, and that’s what led me to both games. I’ve played WoW, Guild Wars, TERA, WildStar, ESO and FFXIV, but only two games on that list have kept my attention for any extended period of time.

I don’t want to spam people’s dash so, yknow.

General Gameplay

Let’s start this off with a flaw of FFXIV -- I’m not going to be sitting here saying the game is perfect. XIV does a horrible job at luring people in with it’s gameplay.

At the earlier levels, you barely have any abilities even compared to what an early WoW character will have. On top of that, the 2.5s Global Cooldown (as opposed to WoW’s 1s) means you won’t be hitting buttons too much early on. This has definitely been the cause of a fair few people giving up on the game early on.

However.

Once you press through that, your list of abilities is far more interesting than anything WoW will offer you. Positional requirements, utility spells, varied rotations and a huge amount of flavor is carefully woven into the class design. While WoW frontloads you with a fair amount of stuff but then doesn’t give you much to add to that in the later levels, FFXIV starts you off slow then gives you the more complex things when you’ve had time to get familiar with the game. By the time you reach level cap, you’ll easily have about 20-30 abilities to use at least semi-regularly, as opposed to WoW usually not going much further beyond 15 or so abilities.

The longer GCD will suddenly start to make sense, too, as a good deal of your abilities are off the GCD, and the gameplay essentially becomes a case of weaving on and off GCD abilities together.

I absolutely love how XIV handles alt classes as well. In essence, you are able to level every class on a single character if you so wish. Instead of levelling your character as a whole, you level your class. So say I’m on my level 80 Red Mage and equip my Dancer weapon, my level will be reduced down to the level I have on my Dancer, and my action bars will simply switch over. I personally adore this system, even if it does mean alts are a lot less commonplace.

Not all classes are available from character creation either. You actually get to unlock classes out in the world, which is a very neat concept.

Story

OHMYGOD THE STORY. Where do I start?

I’m not going to be going into any spoilers here, more so how the story is written. Whereas WoW’s story tends to be written more in chapters that don’t really link together all that smoothly, XIV’s story is an ongoing thing. Information you learned in your first few levels is still relevant today, at level cap, three expansions later.

This allows the characters to have personality. Growth. Whereas in WoW it’s not uncommon for characters to be used as plot devices rather than, well, characters. How many times has there been a discussion on wether Illidan, or Garrosh, or Sylvanas, or who have you, is a villain or a good guy? Well the shocking answer; they’re both. They’re whatever Blizzard needed them to be at the time, for that chapter, and that creates a very jarring experience.

That’s not to say FFXIV’s characters are clear-cut on their allegiances either, however their grey areas happen in a far more natural sense over the course of the story, as opposed to switching back and forth with every patch release.

Oh, and you know how I mentioned I had never played a Final Fantasy game before this? No problem! Each FF game is kinda it’s own game. There are elements that are in every game such as creature design, but as far as the actual story goes you don’t need any prior knowledge of the other games. And even while there are cameos that I’m sure would be that much more fun had I played the source game, they are done in such a way that you can follow things as a complete newbie to the franchise as well. It’s not like you’ll be running into Cloud every few levels (Which, I’ve been told, is rather shocking as Square seems to love milking that character. Anyway, that’s not my rant to make).

Group Content

This is an area where, while there is definitely some overlap due to the nature of MMOs, there’s also a fair few things that set XIV apart from WoW for me.

First off, group size. Groups in XIV tend to be much smaller than they are in WoW. Regular dungeon groups consist of a 1/1/2 tank/healer/dps set up. Raid groups are a mere 8 people with a 2/2/4 setup as opposed to WoW’s massive 20-30 people raid groups. XIV’s equivelant of LFR, which I’ll come back to in a bit, is the only thing to come close to that at 24 people, grouping three raid groups together.

Now in terms of raiding... WoW wins in quantity. XIV wins in quality. While WoW has more fights, let’s be real; who is going to remember fighting Skorpyron?

XIV definitely gets smaller raid content, with each tier only having four bosses. However, we also get a bunch of extra single boss fights sprinkled inbetween. In addition, it’s LFR equivelant isn’t merely a tuned down version of each fight either -- it’s a completely seperate instance with unique bosses *specifically designed* for a LFR environment. To make a list of what you can expect in XIV in terms of raiding;

- Trials (single boss fights) with a regular mode and an extreme mode - Raid tiers consisting of four bosses for 8 player groups, with a regular mode and a “savage” mode. - LFR raids tuned specifically for a 24 player group, usually giving each of the 8 man groups in there their own tasks. - Very rarely, Ultimate fights. These basically are the tip of the iceberg in terms of challenge. I’ve not gotten to see them myself, but from what I hear, they can literally take like an hour for a single pull. They’re definitely meant to be *the* highest challenge.

Group content does not stop there either, though. There’s treasure maps that can lead to little treasure vaults to run with people. The game’s equivelant of World Quests, FATEs, rewards *anyone participating*, giving the whole zone a shared progression bar instead of doing your own quests. This tends to mean that hey, people will actually go and help each other out in the world!

Misc

Here be a bunch of random stuff that I couldn’t really dedicate a specific part to.

- THE MUSIC IS INSANELY GOOD - There’s player housing, and you actually are in a neighbourhood with other players rather than being locked away in your own seperate area. It’s quite cozy. - Most mounts have their own music theme which very nicely adds to their flavor, such as a raid drop mount playing that fight’s soundtrack. You can disable this if it’s not your thing, though! - Oh yeah. Raid bosses have their own soundtracks. - You can customize the very first mount you get with bardings, different colors and even a name, and it can fight with you in the open world. - You can get married ingame which is insanely cute. - There’s this like, Las Vegas-esque place in game with a bunch of minigames and it’s just a lot of fun? Think Darkmoon Faire but not time limited and way bigger games.

Why I Likely Won’t Return to WoW

This bit will get somewhat personal so if you were only interested in the game comparisons, feel free to skip this.

Honestly? Purely from a game standpoint I didn’t enjoy WoW for the last few years I played it. The trap with MMOs is so often the friends you make. They keep you playing even if you aren’t that into the game anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I loved playing with my friends still, but had it not been for them I’d have left WoW long before I did.

Warlords of Draenor is often agreed upon to be a poor expansion, but truthfully? I didn’t feel Legion was all that great either. It was better, sure, but the story was still a fair bit of a mess and the gameplay, well... I can only stomach seeing Eye of Azshara so much, you know?

On a more personal note, leaving WoW has been good for my mental health too. I was being harassed and even blackmailed there and it caused constant headaches and drama, let alone making me feel unsafe in what was supposed to be an escape. That’s simply not really a world I’d like going back to.

I’ll never say never, but I will say likely never.

#WoW #Warcraft #World of Warcraft #FFXIV #Final Fantasy XIV

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cerneala · 5 years

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Review 1 - Murdered: Soul Suspect

I thought a long time about dipping my toes into the waters of video game reviews. While I do play quite a few of them, I know that I have a very specific set of criteria regarding games that determines my enjoyment of them, and I’m not quite sure that I’ll do a good job remaining unbiased regarding those criteria. However, I decided to give it a go, if only to try something new! Please keep in mind that all viewpoints and opinions here are my own.

With that brief introduction out of the way, let’s get on to the first game I’m going to be reviewing:

Murdered: Soul Suspect

For this review, I’m going to be breaking it down into these categories: Introduction, Gameplay, Aesthetics, Story, Replayability, and Closing Thoughts.

Introduction

Released on June 3, 2014, by Square Enix, Murdered: Soul Suspect is an “adventure mystery stealth” game developed by Airtight Games (previous work: Dark Void, Quantum Conundrum, Pixld, DerpBike, and Soul Fjord) using the Unreal Engine. It was directed by Yosuke Shiokawa (director: Death by Cube; misc. crew: Dissidia: Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts), and earned mediocre reviews at best, receiving a 59% on Metacritic.

Gameplay

The gameplay of Murdered: Soul Suspect is simplistic at best. With a small “open world” that unlocks after certain chapters are completed, ghost abilities that are rarely used, and ghostly blockades scattered throughout, any interest in the premise is quickly lost amidst the repetitive, not quite puzzles. Players are introduced to the ghost aspect at the very beginning of the game: the tutorial/exposition given by a spirit named Abigail explains that there are basic rules to the world, which the player needs to remember if they want to survive.

Abilities are “unlocked” via different scenarios that make them necessary to progress. Possession is by far the most commonly used, though the player cannot control the people they possess outside of influencing their thoughts to get clues to aid in their investigations. Remove is used to dispel ghostly walls to open new areas, reveal aids the player is seeing ghostly echoes and collecting the pieces of ghost stories, exorcise kills demons (the only enemies in the game), poltergeist manipulates electronics, teleport allows the character to shift from one area to another within visual range, and hide allows the player to conceal themselves within pocket dimensions to escape demons.

The only collectibles within this game come in two categories: Ghost Stories and Life Stories. Ghost Stories are unlocked by collecting a set amount of ghostly objects (boilers, gas cans, rocks, engraved stones, spellbooks, etc.) and, when viewed, consist of a story narrated over a static background image. While interesting in theory, the execution makes them dull to watch. The Life Stories consist of different objects ranging from letters to ghostly echoes that give the backstory of five of the characters; these are meant to lend more depth, but they quickly become just another thing to check off of the completion list.

Most of the game is spent collecting different things. If these collectibles were removed, two or three hours of gameplay would be lost as well, because without the effort needed to run around and find them, the story is short and fairly quick to get through. Each area of the game is small and relatively linear, with any puzzles easily solved using a combination of poltergeist, possess, remove, or teleport.

The only enemies in the game are demons, but even they can be avoided if the player is careful enough. “Battling” them consists of hiding away and memorizing their patrol path to sneak up behind them and exorcise them, or, in the case of Floor Demons, walking around them or possessing a character to walk over them. Exorcism consists of a short quick time event where the player presses a combination of buttons, and this mechanic persists into the “final boss” of the game. While the first encounter with demons can be startling, they quickly become tedious and, at times, frustrating due to the fact that being spotted by one can quickly result in a game over due to how fast they drain the character’s life.

Aesthetics

The game world is dark, and permanently tinged with turquoise and burnt orange shades. Because of this, I had to turn up the brightness just to navigate the world, and the monochromatic color palette strained my eyes and caused quite a few headaches. There were a few visually appealing images in terms of composition and layout, but even those come with the caveat that they were static backgrounds for the ghost stories or that they were, in terms of how ghosts show the method of their death on their bodies, easily overlooked and not fully developed. I know dark palettes are common in games with horror elements, but when compared to games such as Silent Hill, or Penumbra, where the colors were limited by the environment and served to instill dread/uneasiness within the player and still contained vibrant colors, there’s a lot of missed potential in how the game is presented.

Story

Murdered: Soul Suspect revolves around Ronan O’Connor, a cop who is killed in pursuit of the notorious Bell Killer. Told by his deceased wife, Julia, that he cannot enter the Light without first resolving his unfinished business, he works alongside a medium named Joy Foster to both find her missing mother and put an end to the Bell Killer’s spree of terror in Salem, Massachusetts.

Replayability

Despite this game containing collectibles, there is no replay value to it. There are no difficulty options, and all items can be grabbed on the first playthrough by keen-eyed gamers. Getting all of the collectibles while completing the game will also unlock all of the trophies.

Closing Thoughts

I was really, really exciting for this game. I remember watching the trailers and thinking how new and refreshing it seemed, only to get the game and realize I was playing a heavily restricted version of L.A. Noire. I completed the game in just under eight hours, the majority of which was spent getting the collectibles and watching the ghost stories. While it made me happy as a trophy hunter — being able to get a platinum in one run without having to devote days to it was nice — as someone who loves story driven, exciting games, it was a bit of a letdown, and I would not recommend it unless you want an easy platinum to bolster your collection.

#video games #video game review #murdered soul #hexxed review

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thelongestdamnreviews · 7 years

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Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale

Recettear is one of those games I've had forever and a half, probably one of the earliest games I got on Steam in the winter sale many years ago. I figured now was a good time as any to try it out and I managed to play it about thirteen or so hours before calling it quits. I used the Xbox 360 controller for the whole game.

Usually when the bank decides to repossess your house due to debt, you're not given the option to turn it into an item shop to directly pay it off. Young Recette and Tear, the loan shark fairy, team up to sell items to townsfolk and adventurers while slowly chipping away at the debt each week. Meet the quota for the week and you can stay in business. Fail and Recette loses her house for real! But it's okay if you lose--the game will punt you back to Day 2 with all currently-held items and upgrades but no money for you to try again.

Where...were you looking?

Gameplay is split into three parts: You can explore town and manage your shop, you can sell items to customers, and you can hire an adventurer to tackle a dungeon to find items and hopefully not die in the process. There's also a time management aspect to the game. Each day is divided into four wedges and certain actions eat up time. Leaving the shop and coming right back is free, but visiting the locales in town and coming back takes one wedge, while going to the Adventurer's Guild to explore a dungeon takes two. At the end of the day, your items sold, items bought, items found, and money made are counted up and you're given a rating and the next day starts.

There are six areas in town apart from your shop: The Town Square, Chapel, and Bar will occasionally glow indicating there's an event there. Usually these are small story bits where Recette and/or Tear interact with a townsperson. The Market lets you buy 'everyday' items like food, books, and shoes, and you can eventually buy shop customizations like new wallpaper or flooring that affects your store atmosphere, which in turn affects what customers enter your shop. The Merchant's Guild sells mostly weapons and armor for adventurers, and you can use Fusion to combine items into more effective or more valuable forms. You thankfully don't need to find recipes but unknown components will stay a mystery until you find or buy the right item.

The monsters are prerendered 3D sprites but at least one boss is an actual 3D model. They really stand out from the spritework that compose the heroes.

The Adventurer's Guild is where all the dungeon crawling happens. While Recette and Tear are present, they're functionally ghosts since they can't interact with the monsters or be hurt by them and you instead control the hired adventurer directly. Pay a fee and they're yours for the trek until they get killed or until you decide to leave. Exploration is pretty Zelda-like and the first adventurer you get plays almost like Link does even! Maps are randomly put together and there are enemies scattered about as well as chests, traps, and the exit to the next floor. Every few floors you face a boss and are given the option to press on or exit. You have a small carrying capacity but this is where many Fusion components are found, but if your adventurer falls, you're only able to take back one item at all as a consolation prize. There are several hireables but they're not handed to you.

Set up items in your shop and open up and people will start coming in. It's time to haggle! People will come to you with an item on display and you have to give them the price. Instead of putting price tags on everything as you display them, you instead set the price right when someone offers to buy it. You're given the item's base price to start and you adjust the numbers, also being told at what percentage of the base price you're selling it at. Obviously you want to sell for more than 100% of the item's value, but you don't want to set it too high since everyone has a general idea of an item's value and also only so much money on-hand. You're given two chances to sell an item before the customer gives up, unless your first quote was outright offensive. The game doesn't really give you an idea how many people will try to buy something each time you open, but at the end of this phase, you return to store prep and can hit the town or open right back up.

You can’t expect someone to buy your junk for tens of millions of pix, I guess.

Recette has her own EXP bar. Selling items grants a small amount of EXP regardless, but selling items on the first try to consecutive customers grants a chain bonus, and there’s another bonus for getting close and very close to what the customer thinks the item’s actually worth. Leveling up unlocks content like having customers sell items to you, or lets you use bought customizations for tables and walls and the floor, as well as expanding the bag space for adventuring or letting you bring back slightly more items if you fail there.

There are also small events that are displayed at the top of the screen during the store prep phase that change the value of items or notify you about a rising interest in a certain category. For example, the harvest can be a failure and that sends the price of all food-class items up and their names turn red/pink. It costs more for you to buy these items but you can charge a lot more for them. Or the opposite happens and the value of armor goes down for example, then all armor-class items will have blue names and you buy/sell them for less. I didn't have this happen but if you really flooded the market with a single type of item, you could get its price to crash and turn their names black, tanking the value hard. Yikes.

“Is it wrong to make money off of desperate townsfolk after the harvest disaster? ... Yay, money!”

There are these events in the dungeons too, like enemies dealing double damage, you gaining double EXP, and so on. These only apply for the current floor and not every floor triggers a modifier.

So this is a cutesy shopkeeping game cross dungeon crawler. Why am I not recommending it? I just didn't really enjoy it. Yeah it's cute and it's charming but I didn't have fun on the ride. I haven't really played a game like it but it still didn't do much for me. Buying and selling items to customers isn't really exciting. I wound up sticking with selling at around 120% and buying at 70% and that worked for the most part. Dungeon crawling was all right but it's kinda basic, and it had its own share of headaches. Like Recette constantly asking if you're okay when you get hurt, even if it was a minor loss of HP. It doesn't happen every time you get hurt but you'll be hearing the same two lines a lot and that really grated my nerves.

At least the localization is done really well.

Equipping adventurers is kinda weird too. You can take items with you to equip when you arrive, but then the items the adventurer was wearing already are stuck in your inventory and because they're just borrowing your better gear, you can't dump their possessions. You instead have to set up your store to attract the adventurer, place items you hope they look at, and hope that someone else doesn't buy it before they do. If not, well, you're not going to be carrying as much out of the dungeon. Not a big issue for most but you're kinda supposed to bring back as many valuable items given the time cost for dungeoning. You don't find money in there, and the quality of items seems to vary quite a bit. Enemies drop food and Fusion material, but some recipes call for a ridiculous number of materials and the result may not even be worth the time spent. You could end up with a really valuable item...only for nobody to buy it even if it's in your showcase.

A lot of the game's story is locked in the dungeons as are all of the other adventurers, so if you're trying to play efficiently, you're not going to see most of it. From what I looked up, there's not a sweeping epic tale, but you'd never know it unless you spent time you may not be able to afford smacking monsters around and looting chests.

I didn't really like that the game seems built around the idea of the extra loops if you fail to make a payment. There are some people who have finished all 35 days without game overing once, but then you have to play really efficiently, like not visiting the dungeon when you instead could be just selling more stuff you bought before, or never watching the little scenes in town because you could just be selling. Some of the items that alter your store atmosphere are extremely expensive and you're never told in what way they change the atmosphere--the same way you're not told how items influence it either. I hope you like saving and loading. Or just looking at a guide.

What do you mean I spent all of the money to get the most things for the second go?! Should I ever return anyway.

It's probably not a bad game for some and I'm sure it does deserve its Overwhelming Positive rating on Steam, but I just didn't enjoy it. And that sucks because despite me putting it off for so long, I was really looking forward to it too.

#pc #not recommended

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samwritesabout-blog · 7 years

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WHOSE GONNA SAVE THE PAGIES, IT’S THE DUO CALLED YOOKA-LAYLEE

(Disclaimer: This review was of the game patch 1.02, revision for patch 1.03 added below)

Plot Synopsis: While enjoying their peaceful everyday lives, chameleon Yooka and his bat friend Laylee are thrusted into an adventure when local evil corporate head Capital B steals a book known as the “One Book” from their home. Yooka and Laylee couldn't care less about why he wants it, but nevertheless the duo head off to climb his tower so they can get back what’s rightfully theirs.

I’ll admit, even if I know that these older collect-a-thon platformer games have not aged gracefully. I still did feel some excitement when I first saw the Kickstarter announced for Yooka Laylee. I have a pretty soft spot in my heart for the old Rareware games, such as Banjo-Kazooie, Donkey Kong 64, and Diddy Kong Racing, and seeing Playtonic Games, a studio of formed of former Rare veterans from the 90s era, was an exciting prospect. Their games always that felt that they were coming from an earnest place, they seemed to know what made games fun and had an ambition to their designs seen in all of their outings. Some of their ideas worked, some of them failed, and while their games may not have stood the test of time, they never faltered, and they succeeded in making some very prominent early gaming memories, seeing a game that echoed Banjo-Kazooie’s 3-D collect-a-thon design definitely struck a chord of nostalgia in me. I knew I was being pandered to, but I was still curious to see what they could deliver on.

The 3-D collect-a-thon sub-genre of platformers was defined by the obsessive compulsive action of collecting everything in sight. There are items are scattered throughout all of the game’s open-world like levels. All of your actions are in service of gathering as many of the main collectible, in this game’s case “Pagies” and exploring each world to the fullest to do so. You collect these by doing a large variety of tasks within each world. Some of the tasks are simple, such as completing a platforming challenge, or collecting some finite thing scattered across the world. There are many more minor missions in each level however, to add some flavor to the adventure, be it a race against a go-getter cloud, searching for treasure with Shovel Knight, defending the life of an old skeleton explorer from enemy waves, or perhaps a boss fight against an octopus too lazy to leave his own home to fight you head on.

There's always a nice variety of things to do in Yooka-Laylee and while some of it can end up being conceptually charming, a large number of the missions end up feeling either unsatisfying, or can be infuriating to actually do. Either because of what is asked of you, or because the act of playing Yooka-Laylee itself simply just isn't very fun. Basic controls such as movement jumping and attacking all work perfectly fine. Yooka’s light and quick on his feet without ever feeling floaty or awkward and while his attacks are pretty close range, they’re also easy enough to spam and clear out threats no problem. Whenever the game gets any more complicated, such as needing to move in a direction other than forward however, there are some snags.

The camera is the most immediately obvious problem, with it doing a terrible job at following your actions. Often requiring the player to manually over-correct it to allow you to see where you need to go. Veterans of the genre may be used to this shortcoming, however it is simply inexcusable that it remains this sloppy. In all honesty, it isn’t so bad when just leisurely walking around, but when you have to jump from platform to platform under a time limit or perhaps use any of the movement abilities at your disposal, they are much more difficult to control. It’ll make even the simple act of just getting between areas a complete headache.

Just like Banjo Kazooie, there are abilities to be gained with each new world you enter. Spending your coin-like Quills, that you’ll also collect in each world. You can purchase a pool of skills from Trowzer the Snake, of which both the pun and the character stop being amusing by the end of the first world. This is an area that exemplifies where Yooka-Laylee misses some of the integrity of the design of Banjo-Kazooie. Since you purchase these skills in one place on the map, it can be hard to understand how the game expects you to use each of them. The point of the spread out molehills, the way to obtain skills in Banjo-Kazooie, was that they were always placed next to an area where the power was necessary. It gave you context for how to use the ability and an immediate situation where it was useful. With Yooka-Laylee some powers (such as Yooka’s invisibility being able to reflect lasers) are not conveyed to the player in any meaningful way, they are just dumped onto you at the start of each world and you are told figure it out yourself.

While the concepts of each of the five worlds in the game can be fun, the design of each landscape can leave a lot to be desired. The five worlds that you traverse through are greatly varied in themes and terrain, but it reaches a head with exploring and combing over those levels. The worlds are just way too large for their own good, and a lot of the vastness is wasted on empty space not occupied by anything, and segments of the levels can have trouble distinguishing themselves from one another. Some of the worlds can feel rather barren whereas other parts such as a tiny island can feel with too busy with collectibles and NPCs. This problem gets compounded and made actively worse when the game gives you the ability to expand worlds. The expanded levels sounds like a fine idea on the surface, to get more out of assets already made and to incorporate earlier game motifs with later gained abilities, but the end result is akin to adding another bale of hay to the stack you were already scouring through and tasking you with finding ten more needles.

On the level of an indie game made through Kickstarter, it’s easy to sympathize with the limitations that Yooka-Laylee was trying to work around, it would’ve been a larger undertaking on all fronts to create eight or nine unique worlds, so instead it was easier to make five worlds and stretch them all as far as they possibly could. However, its compromises work against the simple enjoyment that they were trying to evoke through the game. Banjo-Kazooie’s formula worked because it gave you a fair number of tasks in many compact levels. While Banjo had a max of 10 major collectibles per World, Yooka-Laylee instead has 25 Pagies in each. As a result it leads to every level long overstaying their welcome.

Unfortunately gameplay is not the only place where Yooka-Laylee misses the mark, as the writing of the game also fails to stack up. There’s definitely a lot of creativity put behind the characters and concepts here, but the writing itself always falls flat on its face. Coy references to other franchises and self-aware game humor can get a chuckle or two when used sparingly, however Yooka-Laylee’s writing doesn’t even try to hold back, thinking that referring to locations as “World 4” or addressing in universe contrivances for the sake of being a game is just the most brilliant new thing, and will always result in making a dialogue instantly hilarious. It makes sense reading into the credits that the writer is the only new member that Playtonic Games has on for this game. It all feels like the type of jokes that a fan of Banjo-Kazooie would think up, but lacks the refinement or charisma to actually make it into any of the games proper.

It wouldn't be so much of a problem if the game didn't make you have to endure the writing so often. You are given no options to speed through the dialogue easily, giving you nothing to save you from the heaps of text boxes you’ll have to read through for objectives and progression in levels. It can make even simple actions like going to the shop just fill you with dread.

For the presentation at least while Yooka-Laylee isn't perhaps technically impressive, it does manage to come out looking pretty nice. Thanks to its art design characters and environments in Yooka-Laylee are at least visually memorable and distinct from one another. There is something that can feel stiff when in motion though, something weirdly lifeless and robotic in how characters and objects move. They can feel as though they’re divorced from the world surround them. Everything can still run at a consistent framerate and can be visually inspired. That is of course, when it works properly, as at least on two occasions I encountered the game outright crashing on me. Both of which were after a fair amount of active use of the system to be fair, however it should still be wary of the possibility.

Its disappointing to walk away from this game so negatively, because it is clear that Yooka-Laylee wants to have ambition, and yet, all of its ambition rings as hollow. Yooka-Laylee never feels that it wants to be inspired by Banjo-Kazooie, but rather it feels like it wants to outright be Banjo-Kazooie. It gets so caught up in its misguided attempt to chase the ghost of what already was there, instead of attempting to find what it could become. So it results in a game that has no identity of its own, and feels inferior to the identity it wants to claim. There are some points where the game can be enjoyable, but it's often muddled in a sea of external frustrations. With more refinement, more focus, Yooka-Laylee could’ve been a fun return to a style of game that had fallen out of favor, but as it stands, it feels like nothing more than a shell of what had already come before.

5.5/10

+ Diehard fans of Rare will enjoy the familiarity of the adventure

+ Bright presentation and delightful creativity can still shine through

- Completing the game 100% can prove to be a tiresome test of patience and willpower

- The dialogue of the game is groan inducing and filled with many more misses than hits with its jokes.

- The archaic nature of the game design is more cumbersome than enjoyable.

Addendum: Yooka-Laylee received a large patch 4 months after its release referred to as the “Spit ‘n’ polish” patch, supposedly addressing many people's complaints with the package. This patch improves many aspects such as the camera, the load times, and allows you speed through dialogue and skip important cutscenes. You can even reduce the amount of gibberish voices that you hear if you do choose to let the dialogue play out. It also includes many little quality of life touches, a moves list is now available from the pause menu, there are now huge signposts all over the hub helping you find your way to each world in the still confusingly laid out, but at least now more manageable Hivory Tower. Even little touches I wouldn't expect like removing the need to crouch during invisibility in order to reflect things, or making the flight controls smoother are very welcomed changes. A little improvement can go a long way and it shows that the developers really cared about how people could enjoy their game.

While these improvements may still not fully make up for the game's overall design, it can improve the core experience and can allow you to appreciate what is there to enjoy quite a bit more. I would still never recommend going for 100% in Yooka-Laylee some objectives are still repetitive, some minigames that you’ll end up having to play remain to be just an obstructive bore rather than a nice change of pace, and scouring the levels for minor collectibles like Quills can be a nightmare. But the majority of your time will be spent in a more enjoyable environment than before. It isn’t perfect, and it wasn’t ever going to be, but the foundation it's on is much more stable. Playtonic Games care for their own property is plainly visible, and it can't help but make you respect their efforts on this outing a little bit more than before.

Updated score: 7/10

#Yooka-Laylee #Review

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extraquarterblog · 7 years

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Reflecting on Gears of War series

Epic Games and Microsoft biggest Xbox franchise

Gears of War is a landmark success for Epic Games and Microsoft. The two companies have a rich history together based around this series. It's a bit astonishing to think, that Gears of War was originally pitched to be nothing more than a Tech Demo to display the Unreal 3 Engine and who can forget, Epic Games convinced Microsoft to increase the 360 RAM size from 256mb to 512mb, all to achieve the beautiful visuals that Gears displays.

When you think of the Xbox 360 and its legacy, Gears is without argument, one of the top titles of the 360 library. Over the 360 lifespan, 4 Gears of War titles have been released. But the icing on the cake is that they're actually good, just not a pretty painting with no substance. Despite its rock solid gameplay and Cole Train rap song, Gears is not without flaws. The story is what ultimately becomes its more controversial point. Even with a confusing and conflicting story, Gears success is undeniable, spawning numerous copycats as well as giving inspirations for other Studios.

While the Gears Saga began with Epic games, Microsoft is continuing on its legacy by having Black Tusk Studios build the next chapter. But before we can begin to fathom a next-gen Gears, we need to go back where it all started.

Gears of War

When Epic Games officially unveiled Gears of War for the Xbox 360 in 2005, it was a shocker. The visuals were so unbelievable, at the time, It made the rest of the Industry look lazy. And who could forget the stunning trailer "Mad World". The song titled "Mad World" - by Gary Jules for the film Donnie Darko (a cult classic) playing softly in the background, while you see Marcus running through the rain, alone and hopeless.

During the start of the 360 release, countless arguments swirled around the debate if gaming visuals have peaked, can more polygons make a better picture? I still remember the 360 launch titles being compared to PS2 games, like Metal Gear Solid 3 for example. With any new console release, consumers want that instant justification. An enormous leap in visuals, sound, gameplay, ect. While the 360 did have some promising titles like Dead or Alive 4, Kameo: Elements of Power, Project Gotham Racing 3. All looked good, but I wouldn't call a leap over the previous gen.

No, nothing was truly Next-Gen at that point, until you popped in Gears of War. I will never forget that moment, All the debates and arguments over the visuals, if Gears of War was just smoke and mirrors. But when I sat back on the sofa, watching the opening scene unfold then started to play. Oh shit, the hype was real. Epic Games delivered and next-gen just begun.

"Look at all that Juice! " -- Cole Train

But it wasn't only the visuals that made Gears so appealing. From the start Gears of War had this unique atmosphere, a world ravaged by a species called the Locust that lived deep within the earths core. For whatever the reason, they were pissed and started to conquer the earth, despite the military's best efforts. The Locust, were winning. The entire game had this beautiful yet dark vibe. You would walk through gorgeous decaying chapels, abandoned streets surrounded by stunning detailed buildings. The entire Gears world was covered with this rich lore. Early concept art work showed a world where Mankind was slowly falling apart and nature was taking back its land.

The scary part, is when Nightfall happened, that's when everything gets worse. Epic nailed the feeling of hopelessness when the last sun rays dipped behind the horizon and swarms of Locust start to fly out. Right when that happened, you knew, you were in some deep shit. The Locust without a doubt ruled the night. There was no winning against that, only running.

However - this is where Gears gets following for. On paper, it appears to be a survival horror game, well, besides one little bit...You happen to be a giant 800lb armor gorilla, bad ass, wielding a chainsaw attached to a machine gun. Accompanied with a wrecking crew of fellow gears, that's all out of bubble gum. Where no one dared to step out into the dark, You did. When the action gets hot, you charged towards your opponent revving that chainsaw, and once you got close enough, you saw a spectacular animation of sawing, blood spraying, body parts flying, all while your character screams as blood splatters across his face.

It was satisfying, every time.

Now say what you will about the boss fights, Yes, the big lead up for the opportunity to fight with a Crawler was disappointing, however, seeing people deal with the Beserker for the first time always made me laugh. Not to mention the oh shit moment when the Train you're on also happens to have a Berserker on it. I still wonder how or why a Berserker was on a train in the first place....

The first Gears of War is without a doubt my personal favorite. Few games capture that dark atmosphere, that let you go wild. You didn't care about saving ammo, or running from the larger opponents. You just grabbed for a bigger gun and went to town. You also get the opportunity to explore a few parts of the world too, from a run down factory, to touring through the ghetto, while civilians cheer on for Cole Train.

The Cheery on top was the fact you could still system link up two systems and have 4 player competitive play, which made it a big hit for late night bashes. No need for Xbox Live, just plug'em in and grab the sticks.

Gears of War 2, took a slightly different approach. Instead of playing defense, we take the fight to them, on their own turf. Gears 2 was taking everything up a notch. More fights, more explosions, more things to drive. The vibe for Gears 2 really is payback, for years mankind has been on the ropes, but now we are digging deep through the earths crust and invading on their backyard.

The excitement for Gears of war 2 was through the roof, as Epic teased a lot more expansion for multiplayer. Sure, the campaign was fun and a friend can even join in, but at this time of release, Xbox Live was hot. Who didn't want to be on Xbox live killing each other or surviving wave after wave of the Locust in the new Horde mode.

However, what really surprised most about Gears of War 2, wasn't the better graphics or the aggressive multiplayer. It was the story. Epic Games went all out in the story, expanding its background for each of the characters, including a few new plot twists, and adding the Lambert to the fray. Its story, while larger, didn't really raise the bar past the previous game, much like how each Expendables film, you watch to see your favorite Actors, you really don't care what they're doing.

The story answered a few questions, gave some new ones, and your favorite crew of Gears continued to lay down one liners when they can. And there's nothing a good chainsaw action can't solve. Giant Worm sinking an entire cities? No problem, I got a chainsaw.

The campaign mode was perfect in length, the diversity and boss fights always kept you engaged. Gears of War 2 is anything but boring and thankfully it has a decent balance of combat and exploration. There's a fine point in game design, where the players enjoyment and challenge are in a perfect harmony. In some games you find yourself endlessly continuing the same motion, by the time you reach halfway, you don't care anymore. Gears 2 always makes sure to keep that perfect balance. You won't find yourself running throughout same place time and time again, nor do you constantly deal with the same headaches. Sure, you'll shoot the same Locust pains through the game, it's how the game presents it that makes the difference.

At the time, Gears of War 2 had a lot of praise and mixed emotions. People were sad to see the whole afraid of the dark vibe missing and some of the story plots were shallow with little interest but now, being 2015 and looking back. Gears of War 2 is amazing. After years of playing so many shooters, it makes you really appreciate Gears of War 2 and what it accomplishes.

I still remember how pumped I was when I got to control that Brumak for the first time. Oh, how sweet it was.

Gears of War 3, where do you go when the world is in ruins while Lambent is running rapid, and the Locust continues their obsession on killing everyone? Gears 3 early on gives you the sensation of isolation and how do you pick up the pieces to start again? What pieces are left and is it worth doing?

The third installment, without argument, is the largest of the three. With almost everything being grander and more intense than before. Multiplayer continued to expand with Beast mode and updated improvement for Horde mode continued to feed the habit for Gears fans, not to mention the campaign now allowed 4 player co-op. This time, it's for real.

Over the top is a subtle way describe Gears 3. The Lambent at first, add an interesting level of diversity for your fights. Locust turned Lambert is like being on steroids, charging on stop towards you. Puking imulsion and exploding on death. Not to mention all the mutating and tentacles that seem to sprout out from anywhere, can take the action from odd to straight up bizarre.

Love or Hate Gears 3, there's no denying its sense of scale. The game feels large, from the places you'll visit and even the different means of traveling,all feel large. With constant barrage of attacks from the Lambert each step of the way. Gears of War 3, much like the previous in their series attempts to continue laying the story for your characters. From depressing to downright laughable. In my view, this is what ultimately was the Achilles heel for Gears 3. If I had to relate the story to a film, it would be X-men 3. After all the destruction, death and odd plot twist. You reach the end point without feeling truly connected or involved. Just grab this gun and blast some more shit. It also didn't help that some of Gears 3 Pre-rendered cut scenes looked painfully low res due to compression. Compared to the in-game cut scenes that looked crisp and sharp. It's obviously due to disk size that the pre-rendered scenes had to be compressed to fit all on one disk.

Though that should also be a testament to just how large this game really is. Gears 3, again as I said before, was a Love or Hate for fans. However, it was also one of the best bang for your buck too. The game had so much content to explore but the multiplayer was becoming its bread and butter, sadly it was subject to a lot of heated debate in its prime. I think the reason for it was simply because the Gears series had picked up so many fans over the years, all having their own personal taste, eventually clash. Also at the time of Gears of War 3 release, Call of Duty was king of the multiplayer world, so fans expecting a similar competitive experience, quickly frowned on the slower, larger, duck n cover mechanics that the Gears series is known for.

Looking back at each of the 3 main titles developed from Epic games, its remarkable at how different Gears 1 is to Gears 3. You could call that a true complex progression or completely going off the rails. That's really up to each person's taste. While I enjoyed Gears 3, it didnt have that same flair I loved so much of 1 and 2. Everything just felt so over the top, even more so from a series like this.

So now what? Marcus saved the day, the planet still exists and mankind is slowly, rebuilding the world. What can you do next? We'll that's where former studio People Can Fly (now Epic Poland) comes into the picture and decided to do a prequel to the Gears of War series, Judgement. Now if you recall when I spoke about all the backstory and details they put into the first Gears of War. I wasn't stretching the truth, the Gears series often talks about several events preceding the series start. The Pendulum Wars, Emergence Day, and Judgement Day, for example, are re-told often through each game. Gears of War Judgement, puts gamers in the events around Emergence Day.

People Can Fly previously worked with Epic Games on several Gears titles, developing on Gears of War Judgement should be a perfect fit and it shows. Gears of War Judgement has some of the best visuals out of the entire series, and often remarked to have the widest range of colors from a series that's known for its dark and gray visual theme.

Judgement also changes up the formula in many different ways. Starting off, there's no Marcus, there's no Dom. You find yourself playing as Damon Baird, joined with Cole Train and a few new members. But not to worry, Clayton Carmine also makes an appearance. No Gears game is complete without a Carmine brother.

The game combat also makes various subtle changes. While the previous Gear titles are known for the duck n cover system. Judgement gives Gamers more of a chance to stick their neck out, favoring the bold. Only need to cover in the extremest of times. Judgement you could say was seeing how far the Developers could push the boundaries for what Gears is known for. Just what can they change to freshen up the series.

Sadly, Judgement was greeted with poor reactions. Many, felt why have the need to rock the boat, for a series that's been known for its stable features and character. While others loved the game and gave it praise for pushing the envelope for what Gears is known for.

Gears of War Judgement also came out late in the 360 lifespan. Talk about next-gen systems were heavy and many gamers were already setting their sights on what comes next. While Judgement might be considered to be canon for the series, the talk of next-gen shadowed it, making it the most overlooked title for the Gears series.

With Cliff Bleszinski leaving Epic Games and Epic showing interest in other projects. It would seem that the Gears Saga has come to a close. No more Locust popping up from the ground, no more chainsaw grinding action, and no more arguments from Cole Train and Baird. Or is it..All that changed when Microsoft announced the purchase of the Gears of War franchise in early 2014. All the sudden, you could hear a chainsaw softly in the background starting up. The Gears Saga lives on. So just what do we know? Microsoft revealed one of their new first party studios, Black Tusk will be developing the next Gears of War game. Microsoft ensured that the studio was up to the task, claiming that Black Tusk has some of the best veteran Game Developers around and to further ensure the next gears success Microsoft also hired on Rod Fergusson, the former director of production for the Gears series at Epic Games.

At this time, details are pretty slim, Rod and the rest of the Black Tusk team have been pretty quiet. Could the next Gears title be a reboot? Or will we continue on with a Gears of War 4? Will Marcus return and will Gears continue to change itself as we seen in Gears 3 and Judgement? Also, does Black Tusk even have the chops to deliver a true next-gen Gears title?

What subtle hints that have been given. There appears to be a strong chance of seeing Gears return back to its roots, going back to what made Gears unique. I would expect a reboot, but not starting at Gears 1, but even further back. Really exploring the background of this world. Could we start off at the Pendulum Wars? Events leading to Emergence day?

Who know's, your guess is good as mine. But I do know this...

E3 gonna be good.

#Microsoft #Xbox #Gears of War

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